IBM Grabs HP's Toys

Like kids wrestling over colorful -- but very, very expensive -- building blocks, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) has snatched The Lego Group from Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and has no intention of sharing.

Big Blue announced today that it has reached a deal to run the Danish toy giants entire computing infrastructure, including its data storage -- a job that previously belonged to HP (see Lego Stacks IBM Sharks).

IBM did not disclose how much it’s making off the multiyear agreement, although it’s bound to be quite a large chunk of cash. The deal calls for IBM to replace more than 220 various types of HP servers with 30 of its own, and install four IBM Enterprise Storage Server (a.k.a. Shark) systems as well as its Tivoli Storage Manager software.

"Lego’s now a key customer of ours, and we’re pretty excited about their business," says Jeff Benck, director of product marketing for IBM’s eServer xSeries and BladeCenter systems. "This deal involves several of our product lines."

In addition to the four Shark storage systems, Lego will deploy two IBM eServer pSeries p690s; four pSeries p650s; and 24 sServer xSeries x440s [ed. note: batteries not included, some assembly required, Sam Palmisano action figure sold separately].